The present invention relates to containers for sheet-like commodities, especially to containers for reception of sections of developed films and of prints belonging to customer orders. Such containers are used for storage of sections of developed roll films which have been shipped or delivered by dealers or customers to a photographic processing laboratory as well as for storage of prints which are produced in the laboratory. The containers are picked up by customers or dealers, or mailed or shipped to the customers or dealers in boxes, envelopes or analogous receptacles.
Presently known containers for film sections normally consist of parchment paper or the like and are filled by hand. The containers are bonded to envelopes consisting of cardboard or the like. Each envelope has a prefabricated pocket or compartment for reception of prints which are inserted by hand. Such containers and envelopes are not suited for automatic introduction of film sections and/or prints.
German Offenlengungsschrift No. 2,445,829 discloses a container which serves for reception of film sections and is open at opposite sides. Such containers can be filled by resorting to automatic film introducing apparatus. A filled container is thereupon assembled, by hand, with a discrete container for prints. The manual work entails a highly undesirable reduction of the output of automatic film processing equipment in photographic laboratories wherein the means for subdividing customer film into sections (each of which contains a given number of film frames, e.g., four or six frames) and the means for subdividing a strip of exposed and developed photographic paper into prints operate at an extremely high speed. Furthermore, the just discussed discrete containers for film sections and prints are rather complex and expensive.